A blog to keep family and friends up to date with what's new with Olga, Chris, Lara, Danny, Mishka and Jackson.

Thursday, 11 September 2008

Good Samaritans and Lara update

Firstly, Lara is no worse today than yesterday, which is good, but we wouldn't exactly say she's on the road to recovery either. She actually seems happy enough most of the time, there's not a lot of tears, she just has a runny nose and chesty cough. She slept with Olga last night and I had the spare bed, and Olga said it wasn't a bad night, just that Lara would wake up regularly, perhaps every hour or so, when she coughed, but it wasn't too long before she'd go back to sleep.We've not started her on antibiotics just yet, we want to give the calpol treatment as much time as possible to work, but really today is the last day we can give her calpol, so if she's not showing much sign of improvement by tomorrow morning, we'll start her on antibiotics then. As far as the nursery goes, she can't attend for 48 hours after the first dose of antibiotics, which is good news, as we thought it would be 48 hours after the last dose, and considering it's a 5-day course of treatment, that would have kept her out of nursery for some time, and kept Olga or me off work. As it is, even if we wait till Saturday morning to start the treatment, she should still be able to go to nursery on Monday, so long as she was improving, of course. Most likely we'll start her tomorrow and that will give her three days to improve before going back to nursery.

We were good samaritans yesterday, at least towards a juvenile pigeon. We had seen two young pigeons sitting on top of the lamppost outside our house yesterday morning, but when we got home from work at 5.30 one of them was on the pavement, alive but barely moving, with disturbed tail feathers. We assumed it had had a run-in with a cat, and we couldn't just leave it there for the local cats to play with, and people - including us - walk their dogs along there and it would be a sitting target, literally. Olga went and got one of Mishka's old blankets and a cardboard box and she managed to pick it up and put it in the box, it did show more signs of life at that point! It couldn't fly but it could shuffle pretty quickly. I checked and the nearest RSPCA place was closed, but the RSPB website suggested taking it to a vet, so I called our usual vet and they said to bring it straight over, so I deposited the little fella there, they'll try to patch it up and pass it on to St Tigglewinkles ("The world's busiest wildlife hospital" so they claim!) near Aylesbury. I know pigeons are considered to be a pest and flying vermin, but we couldn't just let it become a toy for the local cats (hopefully the local dog owners wouldn't let them play with it!).